Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

Mitch McConnell has been planning to run for re-election to the Senate from Kentucky in 2020. Now it seems he may be running an earlier campaign, for re-election in 2018 as majority leader.

On the heels of criticism from President Trump, five ardently conservative groups asked McConnell to resign as leader, and former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon said he is recruiting Senate candidates who will promise, if elected, to oust McConnell and abolish the Senate filibuster that Trump despises and McConnell defends.

The chances of Republicans losing their Senate majority, or McConnell being ousted, seem remote at this point. But we said likewise of Trump when he began running.

In any event, the fresh challenges McConnell faces will make it more difficult for him to make the deals and compromises to pass legislation, and more likely to do things that advance partisan interests and shore up his weakening right flank.

There is open frustration among Republican senators about their inertia, and beyond that, there are implications in Kentucky for McConnell’s re-election bid.

More broadly, talk is spreading of the possibility of a breakup of the Republican Party, into a Trump wing and an establishment wing headed by McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The prospect of a Republican civil war has increased in the last week, with Bannon’s announcement of his insurgency, and the groups’ call for McConnell and other Senate Republican leaders to quit because they had failed to shrink government, thwart illegal immigration or repeal Obamacare.

“If Mitch McConnell does not step down, we foresee a scorched-earth disaster from a furious Republican base that will take it out on elected officials in 2018 and again in 2020,” said Brent Bozell Jr. of the right-wing Media Research Center. “It will begin simply by staying home — and rightfully so.”

Bozell and his ilk have warned likewise in the past, and have it in for McConnell because he took them on successfully in 2014 primaries. But Bannon is already endorsing Senate candidates, and his choice in Tennessee, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, may be the front-runner to succeed Sen. Bob Corker – who said after announcing his retirement that the White House is “an adult day care center” and Trump is risking World War III.

Corker said “The vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here,” but McConnell and other Republicans declined to add to their past, mild criticism of Trump. They aren’t equipped for a fight with him; after Trump’ tweets attacking McConnell in August, a Fox News poll showed his favorable-unfavorable rating had flopped, to 29-41. In June, it was 42-23.

And it probably declined more in late September, with McConnell’s failure to pass a health-insurance bill and to keep defrocked judge Roy Moore from beating appointed Alabama Sen. Luther Strange in last month’s runoff primary.

If you want to get an idea of how the political landscape has shifted under McConnell’s feet, read a Sept. 26 memorandum written by Steven Law, a McConnell acolyte and adviser for a quarter of a century. He runs the Senate Leadership Fund, which spent millions attacking Moore, some of it unfairly.

Anticipating Strange’s defeat that day, Law said the Republican Party has “an electorate that has dramatically realigned itself with President Trump at the helm.” He noted one poll that showed 58 percent of Republicans consider themselves Trump supporters while only 38 percent said they were primarily supporters of the GOP.

Law wrote that polls showed Alabama voters were “deeply frustrated by the sluggish rate of change in Washington,” and “The Obamacare repeal fiasco is political poison . . . for congressional Republicans in general.” Republican candidates “need to get in the same fighting mood,” Law warned.

And for McConnell, this may have been Law’s most chilling line: “The Republican Congress has replaced President Obama as the bogeyman for conservative GOP primary voters.” He noted a poll showing that most Republican voters “think the Republican Congress is taking the party in the wrong direction,” while four out of five “preferred Trump’s vision for the party.”

The GOP’s growing schism could be partially closed by passage of a tax cut, the party’s last chance for a big legislative victory this year. But that might be as difficult as repealing and replacing Obamacare; Republicans still have just 52 of 100 votes, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran is ill and may not return, Kentucky’s Rand Paul is an extreme hawk on the federal budget deficit, and Arizona’s John McCain remains a question mark.

“The GOP is close to the point where it will have to rely on saying prayers, lighting candles and hoping for the best,” lobbyist and Republican consultant Ed Rogers wrote Thursday.

But even if a tax bill passes, that won’t necessarily pull McConnell’s fat out of the fire. Bannon seems out to cash in on the Trump base, and McConnell’s critics smell blood.

The Judicial Crisis Network was about to run TV ads criticizing McConnell for the slow pace of approving Trump’s judicial nominees, but backed off when McConnell announced he would no longer honor the “blue slip” policy that lets members of the Senate minority veto judges.

That didn’t placate Bozell, who said, “It happens every time a conservative organization shows that it’s upset—they throw a little bone. It’s not going to work.” And Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley indicated that he might not go along with McConnell’s new policy, which could create another crack in the leader’s armor.

But McConnell has proven himself eminently nimble over the years, and while he didn’t grant an interview for this column, he surely knows the score and has a strategy.

Al Cross(Photo: SCJ)

“McConnell is more prepared for this kind of situation than most, because he’s always adapting and he’s never run two races the same way,” said Josh Holmes, his former chief of staff. “He looks for a way to solve the problem.”

But he’s never quite had a problem like this one, at odds with a president of his own party who is, in effect, an independent. It will be his biggest challenge.

Al Cross, a former CJ political writer, is director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues and associate professor in the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media. His opinions are his own, not UK's.